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My Daughter’s Day Without Her Dad

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Planning a wedding is so much fun and so much stress. Other than your own wedding there is no wedding you look forward to more than your daughter’s. You want everything to be perfect.

Too bad things don’t always work that way. When I got divorced my ex husband and I struggled to figure out what our relationship should be. After a while we came to the conclusion that we wanted to be the best parents we could be to Hailey.

Recently my ex husband has decided that Hailey no longer needs him and he doesn’t need to be a part of her life. There are no words to express how much that hurt my little girl.

As we were planning the wedding and she talked to her father about giving her away, his response was, “We’ll see.” He chose to go to Las Vegas that weekend instead of attending his daughter’s wedding.

Hailey and Josh had a small family wedding but for Hailey’s side only my friends and family attended. There were no cards, no phone calls, nothing from her father’s family to share the excitement of this special day.

I don’t understand. How do you just cut a child out of your life like she never existed? It’s hard enough that her father didn’t come to the wedding but for his family to not even acknowledge it, hurt Hailey more than they will ever know.

This is what makes single parenting so fraught with issues. It’s not the fact that you are raising a child alone, it’s because, many times, your children lose half their family.

If my ex husbands family continues to behave this way, Hailey will have lost any link she has to her history on that side. I can’t tell her stories about her father growing up or about her grandparents, that’s what aunts and uncles are for.

It’s funny how when we were married she was their golden girl. All of her uncles loved her and wanted the best for her. Now, nine years after my divorce from her father they don’t even speak to her. I don’t understand it.